An Iowa family had an extremely rare sighting this week – not one, but two white deer, strutting in the wild.
“We were driving home just at dusk on this back road and all of a sudden, my wife was like, ‘an albino deer!’” Kurt Massimilla told news agency SWNS.
The couple was headed home after celebrating their son’s 13th birthday when the unusual encounter happened.
Albino deer are estimated to occur in one every 30,000 deer births. Kurt Massimilla / SWNS“I actually saw it, and I thought it was like a white llama or something like that,” added Massimilla.
“So I put on the brakes and backed up, and yeah, there were two of them out in the field just hanging out.”
The animal could have been an albino deer, or what’s known as piebald deer – a deer with white patches of coat, which is more common, occurring in approximately 1 to 2% of the deer population.
Albino deer by contrast only happen in an estimated one in 20,000 to 30,000 deer births, according to experts.
The family spotted not one, but two different white deer in the same field. Kurt Massimilla / SWNSThe family, who filmed the encounter, couldn’t believe their eyes.
“Oh my goodness,” someone exclaims in the video.
“There’s two!” says Massimilla’s wife.
It took children a few moments to spot the rare animals, but after a few seconds, the reaction was priceless.
“Woooow,” one of them burst out.
